Chapter 2: New Ducklings and AMC

I clean the white board off and turn to smile at my three 'ducklings' as Greg has now dubbed them for me.

"Go on guys, I'll finish up here." I walk into my office to pack up my bags and to make some case notes.

"Dr. Cameron?"

"Just call me Cameron, no need to put the Doctor in front of my name." I turn to face my newest fellow, Ryan Goodman.

"What can I do for you?"

"Well, the three of us are going out for drinks, and I was wondering if you wanted to join us."

Ryan is like a cute little puppy dog, and I know that soon he will be asking me if I am married or have a boyfriend. If he hasn't noticed my ring yet, I shouldn't have hired him.

"I can't tonight actually."

I'm trying to think of a way to let the kid down easy when I hear a voice.

"She's got plans with me tonight."

I grin and walk over to kiss Greg on the cheek.

I usually go over and meet him at PPTH after work, but my car is in the shop so he drove me to work today at Princeton General on his motorcycle.

"I thought you wouldn't be here 'til later. I was going to do some paperwork."

"Wouldn't you rather go out with me? I got here early so we could leave." He whines.

I shoot him a look, knowing that he wouldn't have been here for another half hour at least if he was trying.

"Lisa knew that I drove you so she made sure that I left to pick you up on time. She's an evil monster I tell you."

"Sure."

I turn to my fellow and smile at him.

"Goodman, this is my husband Dr. House. Greg, the newest member of my team, Dr. Goodman, he has a degree in otolaryngology."

Specialties have nothing to do with the nicknames that Greg gives my fellows. Otolaryngology is a very fancy way of saying ear, nose and throat specialist.

"That would make you – Dopey then."

Goodman looked startled and I continued to pack up. I would let Greg have his fun for now. He would soon get used to Greg's mocking and unexpected visits.

Greg felt the need to explain and I could see Aidan and Kathleen coming over to see what was going on.

"Well, Wilkins Sleepy." He meant the second member of my team Aidan Williams an endocrinologist. "And Moses is Bashful." Kathleen Moss is an angiologist and the final member of my team.

Greg knows their names, but I didn't correct him. Not knowing their names is his way of messing with their minds. It's as if he doesn't care about them enough to remember their names.

"I'm the Prince and then your leader over there is Snow White."

I roll my eyes at him, but don't comment. We have had this conversation countless times with different people taking the place of the dwarfs.

"Greg, let's get going. You three should too. Someone tell the nurses to page us if there are any problems with the patient."

I swing my bag onto my shoulder and Greg puts his hand on my lower back to guide me out of the room. Really it's a show of possessiveness.

"I'll see you tomorrow, good job today."

We walk out and he turns to me, smirking ever so slightly.

"I think that I like him. Shell shocked and awed, that's how I like them. As long as he keeps his hands to himself."

"Be nice Greg." I reply. "Let's go get dinner."


Brenna calls me that night and I answer excitedly.

"Hey kiddo, what's up?"

"I'll be home in about a week and a half. I have one more final and then I have to pack. Is it okay if some of my friends stop by about a week after I get back? Tessa really wants to meet you guys."

"Of course that's fine sweetie." I am moving around the house the phone balanced between my ears. "I'm guessing that since she wants to meet us she has no idea who we are or the fun back story that is our lives?"

Tessa I know wants to be a cardiologist. She has never mentioned our names to Brenna, but then again, she probably doesn't know about Brenna's love for medicine. Non-med students don't usually talk about medicine. Brenna's different. She just hates the hours and the traveling.

When she was a little girl her favorite thing to do was swim and go to work with us. When she was eleven we went swimming with the dolphins and that sealed the deal.

"What are you and dad doing this weekend?"

Brenna doesn't answer my question, but I don't expect her to.

"It's an anniversary Bren." I remind her.

We have multiple anniversaries and I don't expect her to keep them all straight. She remembers three important ones besides birthdays. The day we ran away and the day we came home. And our wedding anniversary.

"What is it this time mom?"

"The time your dad agreed to go to AA when Lisa and Robert couldn't convince him."

"Ah."

We don't measure our family in normal times. Birthdays are important, but so are the little things.

We still celebrate the first 'B' Brenna ever got in class; to remind her that she tried her best and that's all that matters.

We celebrate the day that Greg stopped drinking; but we also semi-celebrate the day he fell off the wagon. There really is no celebration, but a quiet moment we note. Everyone makes mistakes, and in the scheme of things, worse things could have happened. We could have lost him. He could be dead. There are worse things then making mistakes.

"So how's school going?"

I walk into the den where Greg is watching TV and cover the mouthpiece with my hand.

"Take-out or cooking?"

"I'm in the mood for some Mexican. Who're you one the phone with?"

"Brenna."

He holds out a hand and turns the TV off. "I wanna talk to her."

"I'm talking to her."

"So put her on speaker." I roll my eyes and put my mouth back to the phone.

"Bren, dad wants to talk to you. He's stealing the phone."

Brenna giggles and sighs.

"IguessI'll talk to him." Her voice is playful and I smile. "I'll talk to you tomorrow Sweetie."

"Okay Mom. I love you."

"Love you too. Here's dad."

Greg takes the phone greedily and puts it to his ear, but not before pulling me down and kissing me.

"Hi Princess..."

Greg has called Brenna Princess since she was a baby. The nickname disappeared when she was about seven and reappeared at eleven. Brenna does mean Princess, but it wouldn't matter if it didn't.

She is a daddy's girl through and through.

I leave Greg to their conversation and go to order some Mexican.

Years ago Mexican would have been margaritas and salsa dancing. Now it's spicy food, pop and a scary movie on the couch with my husband.

Back then going out was what I looked forward to. Weekends of stress relieving.

Now I just look forward to calm nights we have together. Because we almost didn't have any of that.

Brenna is my daughter, but after all of these years we have learned to share her, albeit reluctantly sometimes.

The anniversaries are coming up, lined in a neat little row. The entire three months of summer is a time of reflection for us.

Memories are always from the summer.


Greg watched me as I walked into his hospital room.

"What are you doing here?"

"Lisa and James called me."

"Lisa and James called you." He repeated.

"Two guesses why." I replied, sitting in the chair next to his bed. "And the first two don't count."

I felt him studying me, studying my figure. Trying to figure me out. Good luck to him.

The past months in Arizona had been hot. I had been doing a lot of hiking and it had turned my pasty white skin a nicer darker shade that made me look like an actual human being instead of a ghost.

I wore ratty, ripped jeans and a tank top with Peace written on it. Old navy flip flops showed off red toes. My hair was in a pony tail and I had barely put on any make-up.

Arizona had been good to me. I didn't look thirty, I looked twenty.

An hour passed in dead silence. I wasn't going to start a conversation with House; I had no idea what to say. I needed some mocking remark to break the silence, but it wasn't happening.

Finally, I sighed and took the remote from the side of his bed and flipped the TV on.

"Hey! What are you doing?"

"My show is on." I informed him. "Lisa and James wanted me to come and talk to you, but nothing I say is going to change your mind at the moment. I do have something to say, but it's going to have to wait. So I'm going to watch my show."

He was shocked and I had to bite my lip from smiling.

House doesn't care about feelings. He doesn't care about half the things 'normal' people care about. Running into his arms and sobbing and demanding that he stop drinking wouldn't change his mind.

Me blatantly ignoring his drinking would make him curious. And that was part one of my plan – hook him in.

"All My Children?" He groaned seconds later.

"I hate this show."

"Well, I hate General Hospital. Have you ever even watched All My Children?"

"Have you ever watched General Hospital?" He threw the words back at me, but I expected it.

"Every day from the time I was ten until I was eighteen during the summers I would watch it with my mother." I admitted.

There was a look of surprise on his face and it pleased me. "Now shut up so I can explain it to you."

He did and I smiled ever so slightly.

"Now, this is Erica Kane, the entire show was based off of her. She has three kids. That one is Kendall. Erica had her when she was-"


It took two days for House to ask me why I wasn't begging him to go to rehab.

My answer was truthful. Omission of truth is only a half-way lie.

"No one can decide for you to go to rehab. James, Lisa and I can beg all we want. Lisa can threaten and your new fellows can come in here and stare at you with big sorrowful doe eyes. But it won't change anything."

"Has Arizona made you hard?"

I knew that he was still waiting for me to fall over my feet and hold his hand and cry and beg and plead. Something I would have done. But he had done this to himself. He was a doctor and he knew exactly what he was doing.

And now he was dying and still claiming that he was fine.

So, yes I was uncaring. Yes, I wasn't even flinching.

"Working with you did." And experience.

I couldn't count the times that I had sat up with my father to make sure that he didn't choke on his vomit.

The nights I had woken my mother up every hour on Doctor's orders to make sure she didn't have a concussion.

I had watched my sister tumble down the stairs to many times to count and my older brother leap to defend me from a smack. I myself had ended up at the hospital the lies tumbling out of my mouth.

There are two things that I learned growing up in a house with a father who walked around with a closed fist and a bottle of rum.

To get someone help first you have to get yourself help. When you have a black eye or a split lip you can't look at the person who gave it to you and tell them to get help.

You can't look at them at all because you are afraid of them.

"Our job is not to straighten each other out, but you help each other get up."

I couldn't force House to do anything he didn't want to.

Some people only go to rehab when they hit rock bottom.

Like House laying in the hospital bed. He was yellow, his liver was failing, he almost looked like something out of a horror movie.

But that wasn't rock bottom for him yet.

Rock bottom is different for everyone.

For me it was looking in the mirror one day and not seeing the Allison Cameron I had always been but some strange creature I didn't recognize.

So I did something about it. I left.

House's rock bottom wouldn't hit until he realized that he had nothing.

And he still had something.

He had me. He had Wilson, and Cuddy and his fellows.

And as long as someone cared enough to tell him to stop he would keep right on going.

Nothing I would say would change that.

But I could try. I could merely tell him the truth.

"I have three siblings. An older brother Adam, me, and then twin siblings, a sister Ashley and a brother Aaron. When I was ten my dad lost his job."

It is a typical story of falling into the bottle to escape depression and I waited for House to stop me with a snide comment.

"He started drinking heavily, and then a few months after that started using fists instead of words."

I could still remember the first time he hit my mother. Apologies had flown fast and furious and promises that were made to be broken had been proclaimed.

For years it had gone on. And then one day he had gone too far. But House didn't need to know that. He didn't need to know about the day I had gone tumbling down the stairs. How he had lit a candle and poured the hot wax to wake me up. That Ashley had ended up with a crushed wrist and a scar that almost matched mine. To this day the scars on our hips from the wax are still there. Ironically enough the wax ended up creating a heart.

"My mom was usually the first person that my dad went after followed by my older brother and then me and then Ashley. He usually passed out before he made it to my little brother. Aaron was his favorite and still is. When I was fifteen my mom snapped. She wasn't home and we got beat up pretty bad, my little sister and I. She took us, and she left. My dad tried everything to get her back. He promised to stop drinking, to go to rehab, to get a job, anything he could think of. It didn't work. Almost twenty years later and the only person he has any contact with is Aaron, and that's only on holidays."

"And what was your sob story supposed to do for me besides confirm that you're damaged like I said you were?"

"My father has three siblings, one ex-wife, four children, a daughter in law, a son in law and five grandchildren. Before he drank he had many friends. And now? He sees his son once, maybe twice a year. We refuse to talk to him and the bottle of vodka is his best friend most nights. My point is that if you don't stop before it's too late you really won't have anyone left."

I stood up and handed him the remote. Greenlee lay in her hospital bed, and something was wrong, but I had it tivo'd and would watch it later.

"So think about it. Get help and keep everyone in your life or end up a really bitter man with a few months before his liver gives out and he dies."

I walked out before he could answer. Hopefully he would listen to me.


The next day I showed up at my usually time with a Reuben – dry, no pickles – to find Wilson talking to House.

"Hey James." I greeted. "I didn't know that you were here or I would have brought more food."

I had a salad for myself as well and a diet coke.

"Actually, I was just leaving."

His eyes were damp but I pretended not to notice.

"Lisa and I will be back with the papers in a little while Greg."

"Make it at least an hour or Cameron will pout. We have to get out All My Children fix for today." House requested from his bed. He was grinning though.

"What's going on?"

"Greg is starting rehab tomorrow." I smiled but didn't start jumping up and down with joy. I would hold my breath until he wasn't yellow anymore and until I was sure that he wasn't drinking.

Wilson slipped out and I handed Greg his lunch and turned on my tv show.

"What made you change your mind?"

He didn't answer but I didn't expect him to.

When the hour ended I stood to throw our trash out.

The words were soft; almost a whisper and I froze when I heard them.

"I couldn't lose you again."


"Our job is not to straighten each other out, but you help each other get up."

Neva Cole